realm-economy
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Do we need a cross-realm Auction House?
I live on a dying server. It's not quite dead, but it's slowly withering away. I'm not sure what happened, exactly, but I have an idea of when -- at the beginning of Wrath of the Lich King, Dalaran was packed. By the end of the expansion, there were far fewer people running around. Orgrimmar in Cataclysm was a quiet place to be, and in Mists, the Horde shrine is populated by a few handful of players. As I said, I don't know what happened, but for some reason the masses that were on my server when I rolled there in Burning Crusade have all but evaporated. On the one hand, it makes Pandaria a pretty quiet, idyllic place to be. There's hardly any competition for rare spawns, and you don't really have to compete with anyone for quest mobs or ore nodes or herbs, either. There's hardly any drama on the server, by and large because there really aren't enough people around to generate it. Sure, there are a few jerks, but it seems like everyone on the realm is generally relaxed and well-behaved -- as long as you stay out of Trade Chat. On the other hand, it makes trying to buy or sell anything on the auction house an absolute nightmare.
Breakfast Topic: Do you buy gold?
Once upon a time, the only way you could purchase in-game gold for real money was to go through a guaranteed unscrupulous vendor. These vendors hire (or enslave) farmers to earn as much gold as possible in a short amount of time. Over time, they have discovered that hacking accounts is much quicker and more lucrative. Account thieves get your information from scams, phishing emails, keyloggers, and selling you gold (oops). So Blizzard came up with a way to satisfy the desire to buy gold in WoW by introducing the Guardian Cub. In case you didn't know, you can purchase this tradeable pet for $10 or €10 at the Blizzard Store and then sell it on the AH. So buying gold safely is now possible with Blizzard's approval (and to Blizzard's profit).
